The present invention relates generally to scintillators, and more specifically to zinc telluride scintillators and related devices and methods.
High resolution imaging applications desire scintillators that have high density, high atomic number, high scintillation efficiency, short emission decay time, low afterglow, good spectral match to a photodetector, and low cost. Powdered oxygen-doped zinc telluride (ZnTe:O) is known to act as a scintillator. However, due to the granular nature of the powdered material, making an efficient scintillator screen of ZnTe:O for high spatial and temporal resolution imaging has evaded researchers and developers. Scintillator screens made from powdered ZnTe:O have only a limited spatial resolution.
Another consideration is problems with adequately doping ZnTe. For example, ion implantation techniques have been used to dope oxygen into ZnTe material. However, the oxygen dopant concentration is not uniform and is higher at the edges, due to insufficient movement of oxygen into the ZnTe material. Laser annealing in an oxygen atmosphere has also been used to dope oxygen into ZnTe material, but this method suffers from a variety of disadvantages including excess oxidation of the material that limits detection properties of the material.
Thus, a need exists for zinc telluride scintillators that have imaging capability with improved properties, such as spatial and/or temporal resolution, and methods of making the zinc telluride scintillators.